the noble meditations of amy stafford

October 4, 2009

Dear Jackson, apropos Jackson,

I am excited that Portland is the newest structure that you must fuck up. Portland is the room and nothing lies beyond it (I assume Portland is your room, my room is my room right now, but to be analogous and less of a phallus I should say my room is Gainesville.) Try to treat it like Plato’s cave, and make friends with those with you that seemingly have never even heard of the word “outside;” plug the sinister corners with ristras and spawn new shadows. But don’t tell them of the death pits, because they will find out on their own if they must.

It is that I never can write automatically that is my problem. No matter how automatic, I’m terrified (and simultaneously, this is all I ever dream of romantically) that something deep within me will swim violently to the surface, and shoot out of Jacques Cousteau to ascend left from a water-logged box in the North Sea that he has been taken prisoner in for five years, to know that this is really what he is all about, and he will fuck up the epidermal layers, it will shoot off in every direction and land on a million civilian spaghetti dinners. I am not a creative being. I do not breathe, like artists breathe. I see the world around me through lenses, through a dangerous prescription, and I feel the ultraviolet judgment of everyone else. I have moved to Florida and now I lay out directly in the range of this ultravioletness.

I have just realized that it is the opposite. Here I have for nine months lacked the cancerous judgments I am so comfortable to succumb to. I am too invisible; just strange enough not to get noticed within the militia of my peers. One step more and you are a lunatic, I always think but the opportunity absconds in exponents, one day I take a step, the next day I take another but I never become a true lunatic. I feel as though I am dying when the key I have does not fit, an arboreal prisoner for a terrestrial conversation, a salamander in a salt lake. How much longer can I see the world in terms of longitudes and latitudes, obsess over maps and calendars, not unlike a mathematician’s foaming, emotional abacus of rationality? I flounder in oxymoronic decay.

At the same time I wallow as do the oily elephant seals with the albatross in South Georgia. There is a comfortable grossness, an amalgam of sand, vegetables, pubic hair, and penguin feathers. It is a comfortable grossness like urinating onto your legs, but it remains so unsung. It is the comfort of marginal errors that will save you from putrefaction entirely.

I have trained myself that all I need to speak is one sentence a day, but this is a sedimentary sentiment, and I can only seem to look at that one layer of strata; maybe there are none others. One sentence to pull Jacques Cousteau’s box down even further into the freezing Petri-dish of the sea, losing more hope of an oneiric aerial renaissance. But instead I convince myself that I have been fed, one sentence a day is my appropriate ration. But obviously, I type this to you, it is longer than one sentence. It is better than small talk, I should read it aloud to my classmates for the pure sake of its synergetic existence. People talk themselves out of their accidental celibacies every day, Jackson. …every day…

Eliza and I appear to be growing beyond each other to the point of occasional insolence, as Gainesville and I well have at times. That is not to say anything, we’re still only separated and yet bound by a single strip of dialysis tubing that muffles some sounds while amplifying others. I would paint my room to get it right, it’s uncomfortable. I am no friend, I don’t believe in other people, because they all owe me something. And if just for a second I start to believe in the grandeur and amiability of humanity I am quickly shot back to earth by its orbital slingshot. Still it is a cheerful cynicism, a shitty oxymoron because I feel like a gross bowl of soup. I feel like the soup we try to make in this house and it always turns out gross. Too many beans and too much water and I end up drinking beans. I am opposed to this town as I was opposed to Santa Fe but here there is no trenchlike horizon where the sunsets to line up, waiting to get blown into ten million pieces and scattered into the clouds and the air like ashes let free on the California coastline (somebody’s grandfather died.) I am not focused, I’m distracted by stupid things, I can’t focus and my reality tunnel is humid and dark and searing. I’m trapped within a stretching and contracting hypocrisy, yadda yadda blah blah boo fucking hoo, trapped as fuck my nitric ass. And the ultimate irony is that I have the omnipotent liberty to change everything. It is ridiculous to write as if I am Dostoevsky, impoverished, beleaguered, and Siberian when I have before me an entire universe composed of microscopic futures vibrating at undetectable frequencies.

“There is nothing beyond this room.” Sometimes its message is ingrained through repetition, but usually I keep the future and the past in mind. I am looking forward to my upcoming travels so much! America is the pits and I am ready to get out again. When I’ve traveled previously I often take for granted the extreme joy of sole displacement from this boring society. Not this time! I just bought a book that is all about pairing certain beers with certain foods. I will tear apart Germany, England, and Belgium with my drunken somnambulism.

I just got back from an awful show, I left because I was going to faint, not because of the band. Fallacious arguments indeed. It’s when everything in my sight turns white and grainy and then the ground beneath me falls away, I know I will faint. So I walked home and here I am, eating food, thinking about eating more food. I am right back to where I started; it is kind of comforting and kind of terrifying. Trapped again, blah blah blah. I think it is time for me to read another Bukowski book. It’s been a while, and I feel like it will cum into my life at the right time (now?)

And then, just with another spoonful of a night, it gets better. More embarrassing, but better. I DON’T GIVE A FUCK! I DON’T GIVE A FUCK! I DON’T GIVE A FUCK! I ate fish the other day. I ate a trigger fish and there was some chorizo on the side and it was good. I just have to do these things in order to be stay a man. I might get another tattoo, of a man in a cowboy hat staring down a louse. Homage to H. Miller. It may or may not happen. Depends on how the drawing works out. It may or may not happen, like I already said. Lately I’ve been enjoying coffee. It has been really harsh as I am not a coffee drinker; I feel like I’m on meth all the time but I like drinking coffee and then going to class because it makes me interject and talk and focus. However, I often forget to eat after I’ve had coffee. This is now all about the simple, floating-on-surface-of-nasty-but-refreshing-pond-water talk. I’m in, man. I’m so in. Are you in? Are you all about the post-rock?

I look at photos from last year and you can tell they are photos taken by a fearful person. Every subject is distant and its head is turned. I look at photos from the present time and you can tell they were taken by someone who is now so fearless that she would survive being gored by 16 Indian elephants. This is true. But being gored by 16 elephants is terrifying nonetheless. I like to fantasize about a reasonable world, where things grow exponential uncomfortable, but at the same time retain their pillowy quadratic heft. In my head it’s been Europe. Previously it has been everywhere. I think this is retrograde, dare I ever say anything I do is retrograde, that retrograde motion is even a possibility at all, if anything at all is even linear. Sighing to keep the blood flowing.

I feel like I thought I learned a lot at boarding school, like it completed me in a way. It made me more rational. But I think it was a waste of time. I’ve always been told this by my friends, and I have disagreed, said that it happened and whatever, you can’t change what happened, but now I am furious. It has taken me a whole year and half to even realize that I am furious. Of course I am not furious all of the time. It is all about time and place. TIME AND PLACE.

November 7, 2008

i keep forgetting to post here. i'm at my parents in the san juans. getting nourished. i just got back from the fest and it was the most amazing shit ever, definitely tops fest v by a landslide. i could go into a lot of detail, but i've done that a lot and since nobody reads this, i won't. plus if anyone reads this i've probably already told you my many fest stories. i had something to say and i lost it

October 20, 2008

today i cleaned my roomi did laundryi looked for a jobi looked for housesi went on a drivei bought groceriesi made a sandwich in the toaster oveni went to goodwill and got pants and a shirti started working on my halloween costumei read razorcakei made a giant cookie in the toaster oven

October 19, 2008

man i really hate my life sometimes. i made a gigantic taco. but then it fell on my keyboard. i miss home right now. i need space to breathe. i might apply for a job at a nearby stable. it's all arabians, kind of cool! jess and i are looking to maybe get the hell off campus and get an apartment or something. HOPEFULLY. i never have any idea what the hell i'm doing in life.

September 3, 2008

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